


Were It Not So Holy

by lunafreya8



Series: Were It Not So Holy verse [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Gen, Hoshido | Birthright Route, Nonbinary My Unit | Kamui | Corrin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 09:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19850116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunafreya8/pseuds/lunafreya8
Summary: In the dark forests of Nohr, Odin follows as Leo searches for Corrin, his sibling lost to Hoshido.There is absolutely no way this plan could go wrong.(Or, alternately: where things go very, very wrong, and Odin proves that he is worthy.)





	Were It Not So Holy

The land of Nohr had always made Odin’s blood burn. Every vein beneath the surface of its barren earth, he could feel throbbing in his arm. Every hallowed swamp, haunted by creatures that he had thought to be Risen at first, made his arm sear sharper than the burn of a fire spell down his spine. And those were the things that he could tell, why they were happening and when. There were the sharp pains, the random itching, the dull bruise-like feeling, the pins and needles, the lack of sensation, all of these in the brand of Naga’s holy blood. 

The forests were dark in unnatural ways; he couldn’t feel the light coming through the trees, even when he saw the sky. The castles were dark and gloomy on the inside, but at least there he had the protection of man-made structures; the shadows outside felt like they would attack him if he stepped in them the wrong way, grew across paths and up walls in ways that he had never seen before. Even the roads, going through clearings on a day where the sky was visible and the sun was as high as it would go, were never entirely illuminated, always hesitating to accept the gift that the sun was granting them. It was as dark as an overcast day in Ylisse on the brightest day Odin had seen yet; most days felt like sunset to him at noon, and dawn or dusk nearer to the darkest night.

It was part of why he had taken to dark magic so easily here, where he had struggled with it before. Here, where the darkness permeated the land so deeply, radiated from the broken earth into the bruised trees and the poison sap, here was where he was most connected with that darkness, by virtue of being completely unable to escape it. He felt the darkness as he slept, choking him on terrors he had not relived in years beforehand, in the unnatural pallor to his skin, in the ease in which he bruised and bled and the difficulty he had with healing those wounds.

But he felt it most through Naga. Naga, who would not let her child go, no matter what darkness he would step into. Her voice was always with him, reproaching and encouraging in turns, her light always shined in her heart, and her holiness always graced his blood. But through his time in Nohr, one thing remained consistent with her.

She didn’t like it here. And neither did he.

To be fair, Lord Leo was fantastic. And Niles was great, Xander and Camilla both kind in their own way (according to Laslow and Selena, anyway), and Elise was a joy to be around. None of his current comrades had the same darkness about them, permeating their souls, that the land did. The people were people, no matter where you went, and seeing people not in abject fear was a nice change from his timeline (although he believed that Uncle Chrom and his mother would be having words with the royals about their people’s general malaise and mistrust).

But the land itself was unholy in ways he had thought were gone from his life with Grima.

He didn’t think too much of it when Anankos had asked him to go to his realm, to save his child and the world from himself. He’d always felt like the spare, with Lucina leading so well, and Morgan planning every step, but after Grima was defeated, he just deflated even further. Not that he’d ever let anyone catch on to that, of course, but countless quests, men and women helped, treasures found, and sleepless nights later, and Anankos’s request seemed like a good change.

It seemed that way to Inigo and Severa too, who fell into step with their mothers, when their mothers didn’t know how to work with them. When all three of them, more than the others, could not find a place in this new timeline for themselves. Where the others had seemed to, at least, find contentment with what they had, the three of them were lost in a time where an extra hand wasn’t needed, where people could keep their own spirits up, to where those bonds of war faded to lukewarm friendships on too many sides. And when their own parents started to look at them like strangers, they needed to go. Somewhere, somewhere different, where they weren’t expected to be people they weren’t; it didn’t matter where at the time.

He wished that, for once, he’d thought through it a little more than he did.

So now here he was, running through the forbidden forest with Lord Leo and Niles, in the hopes of finding Corrin. Corrin, who had betrayed Lord Leo and their other siblings in favor of returning to a birth family that they had never known. Corrin, who had been fighting for his lord’s enemy without a clear attempt to even recruit their family against whatever evil Corrin thought was going on with Nohr. (Odin didn’t particularly like Garon either, to be perfectly honest, but he felt that there was an enemy deeper than that, one that Corrin would not see, and the name of whom he could not speak aloud to his comrades.) Corrin, who, more damning than any of Odin’s personal feelings about them, made his arm boil like he had been submerged in hot wax, and sting greater than acid over his wounds. Corrin was bathed in the same miasma that had possessed Garon; but where Garon was drowning in it, failing to resist the whims of a mad god, Corrin breathed it, absorbed it, lived in the miasma that was hate and destruction and ruin—

Odin didn’t think Corrin realized that the energy that was a greater curse than the land of Nohr itself was upon them. He hoped that Corrin was truly a naive, charismatic optimist, who believed that all of the world’s problems would be solved with the death of Garon; that they were the child of the humanoid Anankos, without being the child of the fell dragon.

But he wasn’t sure.

He, ideally, would had liked to have these conversations with Corrin by the bottomless canyon, with Laslow and Selena at his side, in Nohrian, with no pressure from the Hoshidans (or from his liege, to simply accept Corrin back without question). But here he was, in the most shadowed glade Lord Leo could find, traversing through thick swamp and spined thickets, in the hopes of... stumbling upon Corrin and making them realize the error of their ways was what he thought Leo’s plan was, but the more likely scenario was stumbling upon the entirety of the Hoshidan army and getting into a nasty, drawn out fight that wouldn’t be advantageous for them at all. He knew this plan was awful. Niles knew this plan was awful. Niles even knew that he knew the plan was awful (for all of the things that he was a master of, deception through concealing of emotions was never his forte), and so was even more convinced that the plan was awful.

Which led them to here and now.

“This way! I heard something—it must be Corrin!” Leo was running off again, into what Odin was pretty sure was the wrong direction. Niles and Odin were strolling after him (Lord Leo really was a lot slower on foot), ensuring that in his haste to catch Corrin, he didn’t run headfirst into something more sinister. Like a horde of faceless. Or a pack of wolves.

“My lord, the dark streams are not flowing any differently as we travel this direction! While Corrin is a master of many things, I think that my powers of divination are greater than any of their deceptive wiles!”

“I’m actually in agreement with Odin, Lord Leo. That sounded like something far too small to be Corrin—“ he fired a shot into the brush; “and here is your long-lost sibling, the squirrel. Can we stop for a moment and think?”

“Corrin has to be out here, I know it! They’d be the only one with enough knowledge of the area to lead them through, and they have to come this way. I have to find them!” He veered off into a different direction, running all the same.

Niles dropped back a bit, to match pace with Odin. “Do you think we could knock him out?” Whether the wind kept Leo from hearing them, or whether he just didn’t care to listen, Odin wasn’t sure. “It’d be easier to turn back now than to keep going like this.”

“My fears lie not with our ability to traverse this forest with Lord Leo’s body alone, but in our ability to conquer what may lie in this forest, or what may have joined us in this forest, with our lord not only unable to assist us, but also requiring our assistance to maneuver the trials of battle.”

“But letting him run further in is just putting us all in a worse position.”

“Odin Dark holds no fear! I spoke truth in that I sense no changes in this dark glade—“

Sharp. Sharp pain. Climbing up his arm, permeating into the bone. The air got thicker as he sharpened his breath, held his chest, as the sharp crawled over and through and throughout—

“Lord Leo! Wait! I sense— a—a change— in the energies of the forest—“

“It’s Corrin! Let’s go, Niles, Odin!”

Was it Corrin? Was it Anankos? Was it some new foe, not yet seen to him? His mind was too busy focusing on in and out and 1-2-3, inhale, exhale, to decide on what his nerves were tattooing into his body.

Niles looked at him, surely gasping for air with a pallor he had not assumed in a while, and then at Lord Leo’s rapidly fading outline in the distance. He nodded at Niles and waved him off, and then with a final concerned glance, he was alone with the darkness of the woods.

Rustling behind him. Louder, approaching—he forced his body into a roll as the pain crescendoed, as the air around him swelled into a miasma that tasted of bile and pus.

The faceless swarmed behind him, fixating on his former location as he shielded himself in the brush. They circled through and around and near the orb of his magic that he had left behind on instinct, the distraction working well enough to let him discern the situation.

Agitated faceless. Their presence certainly aggravated his arm, but it was not the center of his current pain. And now that he had a moment to think, voices in the distance called to each other in a language that he still (despite his best attempts to learn) did not speak. And along with them was a voice that he did recognize, despite not recognizing the words—the tone, the pitch, the slightly off-beat rhythm—it was Corrin. And the Hoshidans, setting off the faceless.

And Niles and Lord Leo had run the other way in their haste to catch someone dear to them, and he was, while not outright incapacitated, certainly not at his best.

This was bad.

He took the deepest breath he could, past the pain in his arm, and reoriented himself. There were five faceless within his line of sight, two of them close enough to his hiding place that he didn’t feel comfortable moving. He felt maybe another two or three somewhere behind him; they sounded fairly close together, and slightly off to the left. There were the sound of more faceless off that way, along with the sounds of the Hoshidans fighting (and beginning to win against) the faceless in that direction.

In the brush that he had shoved himself into (by desperation more than actual room), he had two exits—one made by his entrance into the brush directly in front of him, and another on his left behind him. And the brush itself, while sufficient to serve as cover while the faceless were distracted, was sparse enough that the Hoshidans were going to see him there unless they were extremely distracted, and had no magical aura to it to shield him from the faceless’ senses when his orb of magic faded.

He had to make a decision, and make it quickly. Run forward, directly into the horse of faceless in front, and hope that his magical reserves were sufficient to take out five faceless on his own? They had a strong magical resistance, but he was far faster than them, and so if he could stun them, he still might be able to get away without alerting the Hoshidans. Run left, into an unknown number of foes to his left, and directly into the path of not only the faceless, but also his enemy? If he survived the faceless, Corrin might see it fit to grant him mercy, but the rest of their allies may not agree to that. And if he did end up at Corrin’s mercy, was that someone who he wanted to hold his life in their hands? Or wait in the brush for the Hoshidans to arrive, and hopefully slip away in the chaos? The likelihood of him being spotted before he could move would be high, but the faceless and the Hoshidans may be able to distract each other well enough for him to run.

He heard splashing behind him, and swiveled in the brush as he lowered himself further. In front of him was the younger Hoshidan prince, his magical bow out and at the ready. Odin stiffened, ready to run, but then realized that the prince’s gaze was slightly above his current position, fixed on the fading orb of magic he left behind as he fled.

The archer called out, bringing over more of the Hoshidans. Most of the Hoshidan royalty was now there, along with the archer’s retainers and Corrin themself. Their speech held what Odin thought to be questioning tones as they stared at his remnant magic, with the archer getting more agitated and their commander (Ryoma?) becoming more severe in his words.

“Leo, where are you? It’s Corrin!”

As Corrin called out in loud Nohrian, the orb dissolved, focusing the faceless on the crowd in front of them. The Hoshidans cursed, starting to loose fire on the faceless around them. Arrows, both wooden and magical, started to fly over his head; those with knives started to throw them into the faceless. But most importantly (to Odin, anyway), their spellcasters started to set the brush on fire. The brush that he was, in fact, still hiding in.

“Stop this, Leo! Call off your faceless and just talk to me! It’s me, Corrin!”

As if anyone in Nohr actually had control over the faceless. Sure, there were plenty of dark mages who could summon the faceless, and many of those had the theatric ability and tactical planning to make it seem as if the faceless were on their side, but no one truly controlled them. But Odin’s time for thought was running out as the blaze started to approach him.

He waited—

Waited—

Waited—

And as the blaze flared upwards, hitting the beginning of the brush he was hiding in, he ran for his life.

“Leo! Come back here!”

He heard shouts from the Hoshidans, as well, along with feeling the wind blow from the many arrows let loose at his form. Thankfully, the flame concealed his identity well enough, only leaving a vague impression of who he was, but the fact that the Hoshidans were still firing at him (to Corrin’s objections in Hoshidan, it sounded like) was not a good sign. He sped up, trying to keep behind the flame, and ran towards the path that Leo and Niles had taken.

The heat was stifling, and the light of the fire next to him threatened to blind him to what was ahead in the rest of the darkness. His mad rush for cover, therefore, was guided mostly by memory and what he could force his muscles to do. He ran and ran, ducking and dodging arrows and knives and the Hoshidan knife-stars, until he fell over a tree root, tumbling towards the swamp at a speed faster than he would prefer.

Impact. Not with the fire still to his left, thankfully, but still painful upon impact, especially because the roll he had instinctively dropped into had put most of the force upon his already painful shoulder. The additional pain of the fall, a mostly blunt pain with a separate pierce, inflamed the searing and throbbing that was already present in his shoulder from a manageable burden to an albatross threatening to take his life.

He cried out, but quickly stopped himself and crawled. The fire had lowered to where running wouldn’t provide him with enough cover to shield his identity, and he wasn’t sure if Corrin would grant him the same mercy that Leo would get were they to discover his identity. While he was looking at the fire, he noticed within his shoulder a large spike off of one of the thorns; the wound it was embedded within bled sluggishly, each move of his left arm causing the blood to flow a bit quicker.

The unfamiliar voices were coming nearer to him, and the exit to greater cover was too far. The fire was dying beside him, and he was injured in a way that was recreating all of his old wounds and fears. He couldn’t feel Niles’s or Leo’s energies; he didn’t have a great sensory radius, but he had become attuned enough to them to know whether they were within a few minutes’ walk. They weren’t. And he wouldn’t be able to get to them in his current state.

But surrender was unfathomable. Surrender to the one who, in his mind, could only be compared to Grima? Surrender to the army that would just as soon kill them all as offer parley? Surrender to those who had been trying to kill him in his attempt to escape?

He knew how that story would end. And he wanted no part of it.

Odin got his feet under him and stood, wobbling as he rose to his feet. He glared at the befuddled army ahead of him, at Corrin, who knew not who they were after.

“Odin? Where’s Leo?” The Hoshidans were seemingly badgering Corrin with endless questions, most likely asking who he was and where Leo was (seeing as names were the same in any language).

Odin stepped back. “As if I’d tell you where my lord is, traitor.”

“We don’t want to hurt you, Odin! We just want the war to stop. That’s why we were going to Nohr, to talk—“

“To lay waste to our people? To terrorize the commoners, destroy our crops, leave our villages in ruin? To be the villain Garon always wanted you to be? I may be foolish and foreign, but I certainly know the difference between a diplomatic envoy and an army. In case you forgot those parts of your teachings, a lesson: diplomats, usually, do not bring with them their entire outfit of armor and multiple weapons. If the Hoshidans behind you truly deceived you into thinking this was a diplomatic trip, then you’re even more moronic than I thought you to be. And if they didn’t...”

“What’s gotten into you, Odin? Are you possessed? Sick? I thought we were friends...” Corrin’s voice trailed off at the end. They truly looked pitiful then, with their pout, their soft sniffles, their eyes brimming with tears, wide and bright in a way that would have won over any of the royals (in fact, would probably win over anyone originally from Nohr on their side, except perhaps Niles). But a sentence and a face alone could not make amends for what had been done.

“Corrin. You betrayed us. Your allies shot at me with everything they had, and tried to set me alight. And most importantly, you and yours have tried to kill Lord Leo multiple times.” Corrin’s face quickly turned to shock, but Odin pressed on. “No, Corrin. You have paralyzed him with lightning in a place where wolves could easily have eaten him alive. Your ‘brother’ over there—“ he waved his hand at the younger Hoshidan prince—“has let loose an arrow that landed an inch away from Lord Leo’s neck, at the level of the artery. Had that hit, he would have bled to death. And let us not forget you almost stabbing Lord Leo in the gut when he was trying to bid for peace—“

“It was an accident!” Odin staggered back at Corrin’s impassioned objection.

“Was it? You’re lucky Niles pushed him, by the way. Elise was able to heal the damage and prevent anything permanent from arising, but he was nearly not so lucky. My point being, why should I ever believe that you and yours intend to make peace with us, ever? Why should I believe that you won’t just conquer our kingdom and subjugate our people? Why should I believe you will take me alive?”

His last question made a few of the Hoshidans pause. It seemed that though he was incapable of understanding them, at least some of them could understand him. Hopefully his words gave them a bit of warning if Corrin truly were the monster he thought laid in wait for his death. (He hoped not, but hoping never changed things before, and certainly wouldn’t change Corrin now.)

“If I may interrupt—Odin, is it? We have no interest in killing you here.” The oldest prince—their commander, Odin thought—seemed thoughtful at Odin’s words. “We will capture you, yes, but my sister will treat your wounds, and you will be kept safe until such a time that you either prove to be trustworthy or your side arranges a trade for you.” He stepped forward, extending a hand.

“And what would be a time at which you do intend on killing me? What happens if I am never trustworthy or traded for?” Odin put some distance between Ryoma’s proffered hand and himself.

Corrin interjected. “I’m sure you’ll be trustworthy soon. It’ll be just like when you first came to Nohr!”

One more step back, and Odin was where he wanted to be. Beneath his feet he felt the dark river beneath him, splashing against his magic as it flowed from behind him to in front of him, its highest point right where he had put the balls of his feet.

Lord Leo, on one of his less busy nights when they were confined to the castle, had said that the lands of Nohr and Hoshido were both filled with dragon veins. That these large vessels of magic could run across the country for miles, and could aid a single person in performing any magical feat from creation of new earth, to teleportation, to destruction. He said that these streams were laid by the first dragons for their children, so that they could continue to steward the earth and protect their people, even in times of desperate need. Only a true royal could use the dragon veins, Leo had said. It had even been a trial in a time before now, to prove that illegitimate children were still children of the crown.

Odin was not of this line of dragons. To think of even trying this, with that knowledge in his head, could be considered blasphemous by the Nohrians he knew. But Odin had dragon blood within him, both from his deal with Anankos and from Naga herself. And Odin was a true royal of Ylisse. It had to be enough.

He would make it enough.

“I refuse your offer. Leave, or I fight.”

“We’re going to capture you whether you agree to come peacefully or not. We’d like to make it easier on both us and you, but if you refuse, then we’ll capture you by force.” Ryoma waited, but Odin didn’t flinch. He switched to Hoshidan to issue a command, and two of his retainers began to move.

As they approached him, Odin pushed his magic into the vein below him. He hooked his magic into the stream, and redirected it up towards the surface. And then he pulled.

The magic pulled against him harder than any magic he had felt before in Nohr. It pulled his bones into the earth, cracking the land beneath him; it pulled his blood down, pooling in the feet and leaving him lightheaded; it pulled his wounds, making his pains grow further. He could see how this vein had devoured many before him, how it required a conquering spirit with dragon blood to even try to use it.

But he was stronger. He pulled the magic up towards him, ripping through the earth and opening up the land beneath his feet. It erupted from the earth in a dark explosion colder than the rivers of Regna Ferox, and poured forth into his foes.

Some of them raised barriers in time. Some of them had the strength to resist the unfocused stream without a barrier, and some had the agility to run or dodge the flow. But he heard the pained screams of those who could not as he ran, the magic of Nohr opened in that shaded glade. He ran as fast as he could, knowing that the vein would not remain open for long without his magic to hook it to the surface, leaving nothing but a hole in the earth, a chill in the air, and wounds on reluctant foes that he neither knew the nature of nor wanted to inflict.

He found the path that Niles and Leo had taken, and continued on that path. His companions were not close, but he knew that Leo had most certainly felt the dragon vein open, and that Niles likely felt that something was amiss as well. But he had to continue on, despite the pain he was in. He would find them soon, in this dark wood filled with strange magic, some of which was unleashed by him. They couldn't be far.

**Author's Note:**

> Odin is my absolute favorite, but I read a lot of him where it’s forgotten that he’s a royal who survived multiple wars, and so I wanted to bring that back to his character (because, to be fair, Odin tries to hide that too). Also, there are a lot of Revelations routes, or routes where Corrin is on the “right” side (Birthright when writing Hoshido, Conquest when writing Nohr), but not many with Corrin on the “wrong” side, so I wanted to play with that too. There may be a direct sequel in the future, depending upon my time and time management skills. Thanks for reading!


End file.
